Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Right to Education with quality must
be available to all, since deep frustration begins with half or low quality education.

We have seen in the preceding post (part I) that future of our children
is at stake. They are attending schools, government and private, but not
learning enough. The enjoyment of the right to education could be enhanced if
there is an acknowledgement of the problems that beset our educational system
and if there is a willingness to solve such problems. We must explore issues
which need urgent attention. And this concluding part of the post aims in this
direction.

Although myriad views exist on what constitutes Quality Education,
majority of them relate it to be a reflection of the scholastic, co-scholastic
and affective (specifically values and attitude) outcomes. It is often closely
linked with what experts refer to as quality learning environments and holistic
development of students, as argued by UNESCO.[1] In other words, the learning outcome largely revolves around two
factors — first, classroom environment and second, societal environment. First
refer to the management of school education while later relates to the quality
of living environment.

Improving the Management of the Education:

While Indian students have always
been praised for being better than those from other countries in the three R's
(reading, writing and arithmetic), the Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER)
and others show a shocking decline among the children in these abilities.[2]
Further, the quality of education being
imparted in India has proved far below average in an international rating
system for schools, carried out by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).Indian students did so badly in the 2009 PISA test that they were practically at the bottom. The main reason
behind this pathetic situation lies in the way we manage our education system
or teach in India, say experts.

Dr. Vimala Ramachandran, National Fellow at the National University of
Educational Planning and Administration, says, "Our children are very good
at rote learning. But higher analytical skills and comprehension are poor,
which are what PISA checks. They need special coaching for IIT and MBA exams to
think differently. There is an information overload on children." [3] Indian experience illustrates how quantity is
chosen over quality in the areas of teacher recruitment, training, research in
education, size of curricula and the length of textbooks, and the quality was
not given priority. These are very
important issues having impact on class room environment and need further
analysis.

Improving
classroom environment:The enjoyment of the right to
education could be enhanced if teachers are well trained and are committed to
their duties. For this, adequate attention should be paid to their
qualification, recruitment, training, motivation and remuneration. The issue of
qualification of teachers is very important. However, what sort of education
they need is not clear. For example, in Knowing and Teaching Elementary
Mathematics, Liping Ma relates that the Chinese elementary teachers she studied
had only nine years of compulsory education and two or three years of normal teacher
training school. The American teachers, in contrast, had bachelor’s or master’s
degrees. Despite this, the Chinese teachers outperformed the Americans in content
knowledge and understanding.[4] Similarly,
although Singapore ranked first in the world in mathematics achievement on the
TIMSS tests, its primary school teachers have considerably less college
education than their U.S. counterparts.[5] On
the other hand, overwhelming primary school teachers in India are graduates or even
post graduates. Do we really need such qualifications to teach elementary
education? Does it create frustration
among teachers?

Another key
factor affecting the quality of Indian school education is the lack of a
practical, teaching-related knowledge base and training. For example, sizable
amount of money that has been poured into Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the
government's flagship programme for meeting the target of universal elementary
education, have gone into teacher training. But no one asks the teachers what
training they want. Somebody else plans and the teachers are forced to go. “I
have interviewed some 1000 teachers and most said the training was
irrelevant," noted Dr. Ramachandran. Further, we have to agree that no training
programme can fix a bigger problem - a basic lack of knowledge.In September, 2013, for example,
43,477 primary and middle school teachers recruited by the Government of Bihar took the
mandatory "competency test", which is based on the syllabi of classes
3-5. Of these, 10,614 teachers, or about 24%, failed the test. The test had
objective questions in English, Mathematics, Science, Hindi and General
Knowledge, with no negative marking.[6] This shows what type of teachers are being
recruited to teach. There is an urgent need to analyze what sort of
qualification is required for teachers and the format of training.

Ad-hoc appointment of primary teachers is
another important issue affecting quality of education. The
Supreme Court on May 20, 2013 accused State governments of
compromising children's right to education by appointingVidya SahayaksorShiksha Sahayaks(education
assistants) in place of regular primary school teachers to save money in
payment of salaries. Every year, thousands of such education assistants are being
recruited in Gujarat, UP,Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh among others. For states facing financial crunch, appointing
such sahayaks who perform the task of a primary school teacher is quite
beneficial, since the ad hoc
teachers are paid less than one-fifth of the salary given to the permanent
teachers. It is shocking. How a teacher can serve better with this salary? How
quality of education can be ensured? The Supreme Court strongly disapproved of
the appointment of ad hoc teachers in primary schools, saying that it would
spoil the entire education system. This needs
detailed analysis.

Rationalizing curricula and pedagogy:The
system of education in India should be learning-centric ratherthan exam-centric. Instead of gaining knowledge fromvoluminous books and lectures, children must be made to interact ingroups and express their views on various topics. Rather than taking notes
from the teacher and textbooks, children must be made toresearch information on their own from library books and the Internet and
share them in the class. This will help them develop good readinghabits, self-confidence and openness to criticism. It will also help them
in developing critical reading and analytical skills. Children must be taken on
field trips to museums, labs, planetariums, excavation sites, botanical
gardens, etc. where they canlearn by interacting with knowledgeable and
experienced people invaried fields. It will also help them improve
their communicationskills. It is true that
teaching pedagogy in our schools today is rigid, and it must be thoroughly
revised.

For Indian teachers one of the most
frustrating aspects of their job is the excessive length and irrational
structure of the curricula they are expected to teach. The data on topics per
grade show emphasis on quantity carried to an extreme degree. For example, in
first and second grades the number of topics in mathematics covered in India is
almost five times that of Japan and other eastern Asian Countries. This is at a stage in a child’s
development when the greatest care should be taken to foster understanding and
mastery of the basic ideas that form the foundation of all later learning in
mathematics and other subjects. This excess in curricula precludes anything but
the most superficial treatment of the topics studied.

Further, the
current talent pool has very low employability. To improve its competitive
advantage, it is important to understand skills that are lacking in the school
students. The National Employability Report 2013 [7]
reveals that India graduates more than five million graduates every year. A
significant proportion of graduates, nearly 47%, were found not employable in
any sector, given their English language and cognitive skills. “Since a
graduation degree is considered a pathway to a job in the knowledge economy,
substantive intervention at school level is needed to improve basic skills of
students”, the report concludes. This clearly shows that maximum effort is
required to hone Math skills of students, whereas consistent effort is needed in
English as well as mother tongue communication and writing skills as well. For students
residing or studying in villages and towns, the maximum gap is observed in
English and Computer skills. Since both these skills are rated as enablers and
useful skills in knowledge sector jobs, they demand early but focused intervention. We should analyze what skills create the
employability gap.

In addition, extra curricular or co-scholastic activitiesserve as
catalyst in individuals all round development. Does the society, parents like
such school which give more emphasis on the extra co-curricular activities?
No way. For this we must review our examination system. Why a student who
is good at dancing, singing, drawing, etc. does not get any extra marks?
The examination system should be changed in such a way that the parents,
teachers and society start giving importance to conceptual understanding
and overall development instead of just memorizing power. Students must be
set free to explore their own potentials. This requires
interventions in curricula and pedagogy.

Expanding
digital technology: In addition to
rational curricula and pedagogy, we must explore how unconventional methods
of teaching and learning could be used in improving the quality of
education. Eric Schmidt and
Jared Cohen in their book - The New
Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business - sketch a
future dominated by technology.[8]
With vivid examples and brilliant analyses, they show how the internet and
other communications technologies will empower individuals and transform the
way nations and businesses operate. The authors believe that
“the most important pillar behind innovation and opportunity – education- will
be tremendous positive change in the coming decades as rising connectivity
reshape traditional routines and offer new paths for learning” (p21). According
to the writers that in 2012, the MIT Media Lab tested this digital technology
in Ethiopia by distributing preloaded tablets to primary-age kids without
accompanying teachers, the results were extraordinary: within months the kids
were reciting the entire alphabet and writing complete sentences in English.

For children in
countries like India, the digital technology promises new access to educational
tools, although clearly not as in developed world. And we must explore the
implications of the burgeoning digital technology to improve the quality of
education in India, because “physical class rooms will remain dilapidated;
teachers will continue to take paychecks and not show up for class; and books
and supply will be scare. But what’s new
in this equation - connectivity- promises that kids with
access to mobile devices and internet
will be able to experience school physically and virtually, even if the latter
is informal and on their own time”(p22).
And this must be analyzed.

Privatization of
education:We have believed for a long time that the
governments will provide school education of a large majority of children. This
premise is likely not to be valid ten years from now. The more worrying aspect highlighted by the ASER
the increase in enrollment in private schools, which has risen from 19% in 2006
to 28% in 2012. At this rate, it is predicted that in a country of 1.4 billion, over 50%
children will pay for their PRIMARY education by 2020. It is time to wake up
and take note of the rapidly changing scenario. Clearly, people even in rural
areas are choosing private schools over government ones. It appears that
children in private schools seem to be doing better academically than their
counter parts in government schools. Further, the students attending the
government schools across States tend to patronize private tuition classes more
than their counterparts in private schools, as noted by the ASER report 2012.[9] The point of consideration in this
regards is that while government teachers are comparatively more qualified and
better trained and also paid reasonably better salaries coupled with better
service conditions as compared to teachers of private institutions.[10] Then what prevents government teachers from
teaching?

Enhancing accountability: It appears that
no matter who is in power, private school enrollment will go on increasing till
it hits family budget constraints. As this happens, unless the quality of
government schools improves substantially, the gap between children who attend
one and the other will create a big divide in every aspect of life and
opportunity. The lack of accountability of teachers in government schools may
be a real problem, and it must be analyzed. They are not accountable whether children are learning or not. “Some of
my studies have shown that most government primary school children study less
than half-an-hour at school”, noted by Dr. Vimla Ramachandran. “Many government
teachers come to school, mark attendance, do some administrative work and
leave. Where there are three teachers in one school, only one would be present;
they take turns in coming to school”, she notes further.

No doubt the public education infrastructure is crumbling and the
commitment of teachers in government schools leave much to be desired. A lot of these
problems arise from incompetent management of resources. To resolve the
problem, the Government of India is mulling over the
idea of establishing an Indian Education Service (IES) on the lines of the IAS,
IFS and IRS. The new service will apparently recruit and train a dedicated set
of officers who will then be deployed as education administrators. Whether we like it
or not, bureaucrats are already an integral part of the education system. There
is no point in having officers who have no special training to cope with the
challenges posed in running schools and colleges. Counter view is that India has more bureaucrats
than necessary; and the general ineptitude of our babus is well known. So it is
argued that why an already flabby establishment should be further fattened at
taxpayers expense.[11] However, this suggestion must be evaluated on its merits.

Regulating private
schooling:It is
time to start looking at private schooling more carefully and understand
problems of education planning especially in urban areas as also to regulate
private schooling without taking away the essential strengths of the private
school. Government funded and regulated, but not controlled, private schools-
like the “aided schools” - replacing government-run schools seems to be the way
of the future, argued by Madhav Chavan, of the Pratham Education Foundation. RTE has already introduced the concept of funding private schools on a
per child cost basis. There is no reason why this cannot be extended further.
Aided schools exist in large numbers in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Goa,
and Meghalaya. Existing practices can be looked into to create new governance
mechanisms so that there is a right balance of freedom and accountability. This
could be another way to improve the standards of education.

Learning from success stories:The latest PISA survey 2012, in which India did not
participate, indicate Eastern Asian
countries (like China, Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan) outperform the rest
of the world. The test evaluates the knowledge and skills of the world's
15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. China took the ratings by storm and topped the
rankings as she did in 2009. It appears that
education system of East Asian countries is excellent in preparing outstanding
test takers, and we must learn from them. China was smart enough to change
itself to meet the challenges of the market economy by leaning from Japan among
other countries. Andreas Schleicher, who was responsible for PISA tests, noted:
"Even in rural areas of China, you see a remarkable performance". It
was reported that when Schleicher visited a poor province in China, the most
impressive buildings were often schools, not shopping malls. And the amazing
thing is that China, too, had rote learning but a concerted effort was made to
change the curriculum and the education system based on the experience of other
countries. Does India have the will to learn from success stories?

Reviewing
Right To Education:The fundamental idea
behind decision RTE may be sound, but the execution is hasty. The move is
supposed to introduce interdisciplinary pedagogy, enhance the quality of
education and impart employable skills. At present,
however, the move is creating more problems than it is solving. It has made the
mockery of education, students, teachers and evaluation system. There is
tremendous need to amend some provisions of RTE in national and social
interest. There has been a feeling that RTE may have led to
relaxation of classroom teaching since all exams and assessments are scrapped
and no child is to be kept back. It means that “the
student’s failure to grasp what is being taught does not ring any warning bells
before class IX”, as noted by the Economic and Political Weekly of February, 2,
2013. Although the ASER has pointed to
this as one reason for the decline in quality and it is an issue that requires a
detailed analysis.

In short, reforms, based on the scientific
analysis of above points, are necessary if the management of education system
is to improve.

Enhancing Living Environment:

No doubt, school is first and
foremost a place where teachers and pupils come together to teach and to be
taught. Teachers play a very big role in what is called a school. However, a
school is a part of the larger society and therefore what happens in society is
reflected in the school. India may have
notched up high enrolments to school riding the success of Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan and the Midday Meal scheme, but we did not prepared ourselves to teach
this new group of learners, mainly coming from the bottom of the pyramid, which
do not have educational background. As a result, none of the factors discussed above can alone make
difference. The other dominant factors such
as physical capability of a population - the brawn factor the energy yielding
capability built on food and nutrition and
health as well as living conditions
have telling impact even on quality of education independent of
institutions of learning. In this connection, less said is better about the
demographic dividend for the present about a population which is high on
hunger, malnutrition, and low on healthcare indices than talking about
education in isolation from the stark realities of human development indices
and general development. Ensuring quality of living must go hand in hand. The following section
discusses some important factors concerning living environment.

Abbreviating
poverty and unwanted fertility:More than
three-fourth of Indians (950 million) lives in poverty on less than the
equivalent of US$2 per day, as per the World Development Indicators (2011). Further,
relatively high population growth
mainly due to unwanted fertility makes it more difficult to lift large numbers
of people out of poverty. [12] More
than two in five pregnancies are unintended/unplanned or simply unwanted by the women who experience them and more than half of
these pregnancies result in births that spur continued population growth. As a
result, a substantial proportion of pregnancies (21% of all pregnancies that
result in live births) are unplanned or unintended. Around 26 million children
are born in India every year and out of this about 6 million births were classified
as unwanted in 2005-06. Further, based on the National Family Health Survey-3, [13]
it is estimated that about 30% or
around 220 million people in the young age group 0-35 years in India was the product of
unwanted childbearing in 2005-06. The level of unwanted fertility in this age
group has increased from 23% in 1992-93 to 30% in 2005-06.[14]

The consequences
of unwanted fertility are serious, slowing down the process of socio-economic
development as well as learning capacity. It is because unwanted childbearing results
in poor physical growth and diminished
concentration in daily tasks thus impacting learning capacity. There may
be several reasons behind unwanted childbearing, but most important one is
related to the imperfect control over the reproductive process. So letting women have the means to manage
their childbearing will help to make India a more stable place. Key to this new
approach should be to provide quality reproductive health services with contraceptive
choices. [15]

Improving
living conditions:Physical living conditions
are equally important in producing an enabling environment for learning. Findings ofthe Census of
India 2011 – Tables on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets indicate
that sub-human living conditions still
haunt people. Only 47% of households have a source of water
within the premises while 53% of households travel more than half a kilometre in rural
areas and more than 100 meters in urban areas to fetch their supplies. This problem is further compounded
by lack of access to sanitation. About 53% of Indian households do not have a
toilet within their premises. Only 28% of the households use LPG (Liquefied Petroleum
Gas) as a cooing fuel. Around two-thirds of the total households have electricity as the main source of lighting
in the country in 2011. Any
improvement in access to toilet facilities, water, electricity and LPG is
likely to result in a considerable reduction in domestic drudgery especially
for girls/women, freeing up their time for other activities including schooling
and monitoring children performance. [16]

Discussion
and Conclusion:

The promise
of demographic dividend will not last long. Can India take advantage of this
demographic window in the next few years and benefit from it? One cannot be
too optimistic about this considering its poor education system from bottom to
top. The largest part of India's schools is of poor quality. Teachers are
inadequately prepared, weakly motivated, poorly paid, and frequently absent. At
the same time living environment is not very encouraging or fascinating. Big changes in
the management of education, as noted above, are needed. As such, education is too
important to be held hostage to outmoded thinking. The time has come to reform
it, based on a progressive vision, a clear understanding of ground realities,
as noted above and the courage to cut through the nettles it is enveloped in. Whether
India will be able to take challenge?

The
Constitutional amendment in 2002, imposition of education cess in 2004 leading
to increasing financial allocation for elementary education, and finally the
passage and enforcement of the Right to Education Act in 2010 after a long wait
were all step-wise demonstrations of increasing political desire, although not
quite the WILL. For a country that is undergoing huge
economic, social, and demographic changes, education requires a much more
resolute political direction, as argued by Madhav Chavan.

It
is important for political leaders to realize that education has been in a deep
crisis. We are chasing ideals while practical realities limit what is possible
on the ground. The Government
of India must play a leading role in pushing the educational reforms and high
standards we need, however, the impetus for that change will come from States,
and from local schools as well as community. So, we must also involve the
educators and community to reach it. For this, the Government of India must
constitute a high level committee or involve educational institutes to analyze
above issues to suggest a plan of action.

[14]For further details, see ,”Managing unwanted fertility in India: Way forward”, a paper prepared by the author for the National Conference on
National Rural Health Mission: A Review of Past Performance and Future
Directions, organized by the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi and held on August 6-8, 2013.

Saturday, 30 November 2013

Unless
education is rescued from quagmire of mediocrity, all talk about realizing India’s
demographic dividend will be without substance; and the country would be
inching closer to demographic disaster.

“Education is future”.[1]
For India, that carries a special vibrancy, since we are frequently reminded of
our “demographic dividend”.The team
led by Harvard economist David Bloom, who coined the term, argued that
“population age structure, more than size or growth per se, affects economic
development……………if the right kinds of educational, health, and labor-market
policies are in place”. [2]
In other words, the concept is based on
the premise that what matters for a nation's economic growth is not the size of
the population but its age structure. It is projected that by 2025, over one
third of Indian population (around 500 million) will be less than twenty years
old, as per the UN
Population Division. That is
great news, because these Indians are either already born or about to be
born. This demographic fact has important implications for the labor
market. They represent the national
strength, vitality and vigor. If properly educated or trained,they can become the custodian of our national hope, since it is not
enough to have lots of young people — these need to be properly educated to
fully contribute to the growing economy. [3]
After all, as the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung
(1875–1961), rightly said: “The wine of youth does not always clear with
advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid”.

The promise of “demographic dividend” will not last long. Can India take
advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of decades? Are our
education systems geared to meet this challenge today? One cannot be too optimistic
about considering its poor education system from bottom to top. The Harvard economistRaj Chetty
argues that “improving school education especially elementary education, rather than just college
education in India, is likely to be a key answer to the problem”.The post aims at analyzing present state of school education in India by
using secondary data, and argues unless education is rescued from quagmire of
mediocrity, all talk about developing a skilled human resource pool and
realizing the country`s demographic dividend will be without substance; and the
country would be inching closer to demographic disaster.[4]
The paper suggests areas which need immediate scientific analysis or attention
to improve the state of education.

State of education:

The school education in India can be classified into five levels of
education. First is the pre-primary level, for toddlers aged 3-5. Then is the
Primary School for children 6-11. Middle school is for 12-14 years of age.
Secondary school is for children of 15 and 16. And finally, Higher Secondary
School is for children the age of 17 and 18. The National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT) is the apex body for curriculum related matters
for school education in India.Today
more and more students are getting their enrolment in schools
mainly due to the Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyanwhich is one of the largest education initiatives in
the world.Government also
runs various initiatives including free lunch (mid-day meal), raising general
public awareness, etc to increase enrollment. As per the World Bank in India
there are more than 7, 40,000 formal schools; more than 3.6 million teachers
are working on full time basis. Majority of elementary schools (Primary plus
Middle) are run by the government and provide free education. About
one-fifth of elementary schools are run by the private sector. They attract
children from higher income group. Private sector plays a more significant role
in secondary education. Over 60% of secondary schools are private.

Across the world, India is seen
as an education powerhouse — based largely on the reputation of a few islands
of academic excellence such as the IITs and IIMs. But scratch the glazed
surface of education system and the picture turns seriously bleak. The quality
of education whether at school or higher education[5]
is significantly poor as compared with major developing nations. In fact, quality
is going from bad to worse. Three recent reports on state of education paint a grim picture of school
education in India.

First, the Wipro and Educational
Initiatives published the Quality Education Survey on high-end schools in
metropolitan cities, which found them lacking on quality parameters and
indicted them for excessive reliance on rote learning.[6] Another salient feature of the QES is that student
performance seems to have fallen since 2006, when the study on learning in the
metros was initiated. The report also reveals that learning levels in India’s
elite schools are not on par with international standards. Second, the secondary
students from the States of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, showpieces for
education development in India, who were put on a global stage stood very low on
their reading, math and science abilities. India ranked second last among the
73 countries that participated in theProgramme for
International Student Assessment(PISA),
conducted by the OECD Secretariat to evaluate education
systems worldwide.[7] China,
which participated in PISA for the first time along with India, scored the
highest in reading. It also topped the charts in mathematics and science. And
third, Pratham`s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2012, assessing
schools in rural India, found declining attendance, over-reliance on private
tuitions and declining reading and mathematical abilities of children in the 6 to
14 years age category. In just two years between 2010 and 2012, percentage of
fifth graders in rural publicschoolswho can read second grade-level text
has declined from 51% to 42%. Further, achievement levels in arithmetic have
fallen drastically. Percentage of fifth graders who could do a simple two-digit
subtraction has fallen from 71% to 53% in two years. This is alarming and pathetic.

Why
pathetic situation?

Taken together, these three
reports make it amply clear that despite a welcome high enrolment rate - around
97% - at the primary level, the quality of school learning is simply not up to the
mark. Unfortunately, here we are moving backwards. What a mess we seem to have made of our education system, condemning at
least one more generation to servitude in place of empowerment. Now
question arises why the quality of education is low and it is deteriorating
fast.

It does not mean that Indians are
not interested in the quality of education. The demand for quality education is
intense and students and parents are going to great lengths to access it. The
problems are thus on the supply side. Quality
of education has much more to do with teachers, than what is believed. Of
course it has to do with the infrastructure, course content and such other
parameters. But here we are talking of some basic skills expected from pupils
who have at least on paper gone through a good many year. Either there is
something terribly wrong with the teacher recruitment and training or there is
a total lack of dedication to their profession. As such, it is
little wonder that around half of class V students surveyed under ASER were
able to read class II-level texts, among other depressing statistics. In short, there is something terribly wrong with the
management of education in the country.

Further, ad-hoc policy decisions
have done more harm than good. Educationists blame Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for
lowering the standard of education and teacher qualifications in order to
increase enrolment. Also, the Right To Education (RTE) Act, with its objective
of providing free and fare education to all children in the age group of 6 to
14 to propel India to greater heights of prosperity and productivity, misses the quality issue. The Act came to effect on 1 April, 2010. The Act requires all
private and government schools to reserve 25% of the seats for children
belonging to weaker sections of the society. The Act also states that no child
shall be expelled, held back or required to pass a board examination until the
completion of elementary education (8th grade). There is also a
special training of school drop-outs to bring them up at par with students of
the same age among other provisions. [8]

The RTE Act has met with a lot of
criticism such as being called a draft that was hastily prepared, there was not
much consultation made on the quality of education. The three-year compliance
period for the Act is already over. What has the Act accomplished? “Sadly, not
very much that is positive”, as argued by Prof. Arvind Panagariya in his thought
provoking article: “What Right To Education?” [9] After three-year period for implementation of
different policies as suggested by RTE ACT, the government schools have
continued to wallow in pathetic conditions and progress was slow, as reported
by ASER 2012 (Table 1). Based on RTE norms, the pupil teacher ratio shows
improvement but at a slow rate. In 2010, the proportion of schools meeting
these norms was 39%. This number has risen to 43% in 2012. The proportion of schools with useable toilets
has increased from 47% in 2010 to 56% in 2012. Of schools which had this
separate provision, close to half had useable girls’ toilets, as compared to two-fifth
in 2010. The mid-day meal was observed being served in 87% schools that were
visited.

Table 1: School meeting selected
RTE norms, 2010-2012

Item

% of school meeting the RTE Norms

2010

2011

2012

Pupil-teacher ratio

39

41

43

Classroom-teacher ratio

76

74

74

Drinking water available

73

73

73

Toilet usable

42

49

56

Library but no books being used by children on day of survey.

25

29

32

Mid-day meal served in school

85

87

87

Annual

Annual status of education
Report 2012, Pratham

Another important provision in
the Act promises to do to elementary education what our labour laws have done
to manufacturing. The law requires all schools to satisfy a set of highly
demanding input norms, most of which have little to do with educational
outcomes. These norms include all-weather building with playground,
well-equipped library, propersportsequipment, maximum student-teacher
ratio, availability of art, health and sports teachers and minimum hours of
instruction. By imposing strict parameters on private schools, the RTE has
squeezed the few entrepreneurs engaged in this field, discouraging further
investment.

Further, the RTE undermines the quality
issues. A key provision in the Act abolishes board examinations and grants
automatic promotion to each child to the next grade at the end of the academic
year since examinations produce stress in children. It also requires the award
of a diploma to all at the end of eight years regardless of the knowledge and
skills acquired. Also, children now know that till Class VIII they cannot be
denied promotion however low they score. It is
anybody's guess what value such a diploma will command in the marketplace.
Commenting on this, Prof. Panagariya notes: “With rare
exceptions, teachers in India, especially in government schools, have been
known for their absenteeism and lackadaisical attitude towards teaching.
Student performance in examinations offered one last instrument to evaluate not
just students but teachers as well”. Therefore, it was widely predicted that
the abolition of examinations would lead to increased complacency among
teachers and reduce student achievements and their chances of employability.

The lack of employable
graduates points to the crisis in education. The National Employability
Report 2013 [10] reveals
that India graduates more than five million graduates every year. A significant
proportion of graduates, nearly 47%, were found not employable in any sector,
given their English language and cognitive skills. “Since a graduation degree
is considered a pathway to a job in the knowledge economy, substantive
intervention at school level is needed to improve basic skills of students”,
the report concludes. It appears school education system in India promoting
rote learning in place of actual application of concepts.

[5]The "QS World University Rankings"
for 2012 showed that our universities and even "institutes of
excellence" including IITs and IIMs
did not fare any better when compared to their international counterparts. Not
a single Indian university or institute has made it to the top 200 of the
Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings — the most reputed global rankings of
institutes for higher education. In 2010, IIT-Bombay was ranked 187, but
dropped to 227 on 2012. China has seven institutes in the
top 200 list. Refer: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-only-brics-country-with-no-institute-in-world-s-top-200/1001254/#sthash.RAotmCGw.dpuf.